Who

This is Not a Game Review

I have a peculiar, but probably not particularly unique, habit. I like to read
reviews of things after I have otherwise consumed them. I do this a lot with
movies, music, books and other such “artistic” media. I think part of this
activity stems from the engineer/dork need to search out validation for one’s
opinions. For example, I was once thrilled to find out that the Trader Joe’s
red wine that I had bought was also enjoyed by the wine critic on The
Splendid Table. We are creatures of ego, we can’t help it.

This is not the only reason I engage in this behavior though. The main reason
is to read interesting writing about something that I enjoyed, or didn’t, as
the case may be. Of all of the media that I consume, what saddens me the most
is how little interesting writing there is about video games.

This fact was brought into stark relief by the recent [gnashing of teeth]()
about C|Net and Gamespot. What was most upsetting about the whole blowup was
that nobody seemed the last bit interested in the quality of the content
under discussion.

Let’s not kid ourselves. When you strip away all the pretention and self-
importance, the economic interests, the difficulties of working on such huge
collections of content under a time deadline and all the rest, one basic fact
remains: almost all of the writing that you can find about video games is
horrible. And I don’t mean this in a Sturgeon’s Law way, where we wink and
nudge each other about how most of everything is bad. I mean that almost none
of it could even survive as a term paper for a freshman writing class at the
satellite campus of a second tier state university.

I have a modest collection of examples. I started playing Assassin’s Creed
this weekend, and managed to get enough time in to form some basic first
impressions. Curious, I surfed on over Metacritic to see what the collective
of Internet Game Critics had to say about the game. You can read the blurbs
for yourself
here.

I will now unfairly cherry pick some of the most egregiously terrible excerpts
from the page above. From Gamer 2.0, we have:

Assassinâ€™s Creed is remarkable in every aspect it performs. From the
sprawling city life to the dual-vision storyline, everything blends together
to offer one of the most complete and satisfying experiences so far this year.

Deeko says:

Assassin’s Creed is one of those games that could be considered for the
“games as art” debate. A lot of times you’ll stop for a second and just stare
in awe at how beautiful and graceful the game is. The game is by no means
perfect, but it does start to head into the right direction that most sandbox
games should.

Meanwhile, Daily Game opines:

The open-world genre has never looked so good, but it could’ve played a bit
more realistically given the subject matter. A few fewer Biblical references
would’ve been nice, too.

Everything except Altair’s athletics feels underdeveloped and painfully
shallow, making the end result an overhyped attempt to recoup the development
costs for something that’s little more than an extended tech demo.

I would like to pass a law that forbids the use of the phrase tech demo in
any writing about games.

Almost all of the writing on this game follows the same general patterns:

- There are ponderous catalogs of technical features and box bullet points.
Gamespot, for example, uses up four paragraphs talking about how the
graphics look great, and then segues into how the sound design is great too.

- There are adolescent declarations of unconditional love. The first few
10⁄10 reviews are always like this. Here is where the poor abused gamers tell
us that the user interface is broken, combat is clunky, the load times are
horrible, but it’s still the best game ever.

- There are subjective judgements that are not backed up by either objective
observations or any sort of well-written rationale at all.

- Finally, there are adolescent screeds against the game, similar to the
example at Gamecritics.

All in all, a depressing collection of mediocrity. But, I did find some better
writing about the game. First, buried in the inside pages of the New York
Times, there are a few dozen tightly chosen words that, even though they are only one third
of the text of the whole article, have more to say about the game than
anything you can find on the Metacritic page. Second, Gamers With
Jobs wins creativity points for
framing their complaints as a list of lighthearted bug reports and patch
requests to the developers. Finally, Yahtzee maintains his high level of
entertainment value, and his status as the
best thing the Escapist ever accidently found and published.

I think each of these pieces illustrate what is missing from almost all of the
enthusiast press in video games: creative and interesting ideas about video
games and a professional level of execution on those ideas.

Of course, we here at Tea Leaves, and I, psu, in particular, fall into this
same trap. Here is how I write a new page about some game I am playing:

1. First, write some pithy semi-personal statement about a strange and
annoying habit I have.

2. Tie this habit somehow to the item under review. Try and describe how the
game plays.

3. Complain a lot.

4. Say something nice. Then write some self-centered pithy filler.

5. Make fun of hardcore fanboys.

6. Tie it up with a pithy ending that is hopefully insulting to hardcore
fanboys.

It almost writes itself. Of course, we here at Tea Leaves are just a part time
weblog. I write most of this stuff while dinner is on the stove because I
can’t play Halo while the kid is awake. Under no circumstances would I
presume to put up my writing as anything that could survive in a real
commercial marketplace. But there is one thing that I do try to do
consistently, and even succeed at occasionally: I try to write something about
the game that is more interesting than how they used shaders in DirectX 10 to
do the water effects.

This happens too rarely in the enthusiast press about video games. The writing
is rarely creative, and when does strive for a higher level it is often poorly
executed. Which brings me back to the Gerstmann mess. Over at Newsweek, a
publication that you would think would know how to hire a competent writer, we
have this guy N’Gai Croal going off on how the poor writers are again being
crushed and enslaved in the
sewers by the evil monied interests. Actually, I’m not sure what he’s
talking about because I can’t follow his writing for more than a couple of
paragraphs. All of the shiny hip blinds my ability to understand the text. No
that’s not it, it’s because the writing is completely incomprehensible. If I
were the interest behind his money I’d suggest he find a new editor, or figure
out where the delete key is on his keyboard.

The depressing conclusion that I reach from all of this is that there must be
no market that is wiling to pay cash for mature and intelligent writing about
video games. The inevitable truth is that the writing is the way it is because
that’s how gamers want it. I’d like to be optimistic and think that within my
lifetime the medium will have matured to the point where it can actually
support professional and creative criticism. But I’m not that young anymore,
so I’m not holding my breath.